Photography and Video

Cameras, camcorders, and photography advice.

Chris Marquardt ... Not buying on the iPhone 11

Chris Marquardt

Episode 1627

Chris joins us and says he's not buying the iPhone 11 because he believes that the phone is in the "tock" cycle, and there's going to be a much better phone next year. So he's going to wait. Having said that, he thinks that the three lens camera on the iPhone is a two stage upgrade. The three cameras are matched, so they have the same colors and calibrated to make it a seemless shot. And the night shot mode is interesting as an answer to Google's Night Sight. It takes up to nine photos at various aperture and shutters speeds and then uses computational photography to fuse them together.

Is my camera media card defective?

SD Card

Episode 1627

Hector from Napoleon, OH

Hector has a Sandisk 64GB SD card from Best Buy, and now he's getting error messages due to "insufficient write speed."  Is there something wrong with his camera? Leo says that most SD cards today can keep up with the cameras they are used in. You need a class 4 card for the Vixia Camcorder, and Hector's is a class 10. So it's plenty fast. But it could be that the card is wearing out after steady use and it's starting to fail. When you start getting errors like that, you're living on borrowed time. So it's time to get a new card.

How can I scan my photos and videos?

DVD

Episode 1621

Steve from Chatsworth, CA

Steve wants to know a way to convert photos and videos into a DVD. Leo says that ScanCafe is a site that will send you a box and you fill it and then they will scan it all and return them with a DVD of your memories. It's not that cheap, but they will clean up your negatives and give you the best possible image. But you also have to be OK with mailing your photos and videos, trusting you'll get them back. If you're not, you can always just use a camera and an easel and take pictures of each image.

Did I lose my photos?

Windows 10

Episode 1620

Joe from Brea, CA

Joe is a high school computer teacher, and he had scanned a bunch of photographs that he scanned on his computer. He took that folder and moved it to another folder, but it disappeared and was replaced with a file cabinet folder. Leo says that a CAB file is a compressed folder. He searched the entire computer for the folder, and it was gone. Fortunately, he had a backup. But what happened? A virus?

Chris Marquardt and the missing color

Chris Marquardt

Episode 1617

Chris joins Leo to talk about a color in photography that doesn't exist: magenta. Chris says there is no magenta, and your brain invents the color shades in between the basic colors. On top of that, ten percent of people are color blind. You can mix colors sure, but its just mixed light in the spectrum. Each color has a wavelength in the visible spectrum. Magenta doesn't have a wavelength in the visible spectrum: it doesn't exist. But your mind makes it up when you mix colors together. It's called an extra spectral color.

Can I Buy More Cloud Storage for my Samsung Phone?

Samsung

Episode 1614

Hope from McComb, Mississippi

Hope wanted to know if she can upgrade her cloud storage through her Galaxy Note 9. Leo is pretty sure that Samsung will sell her more cloud storage if she wants to, and it's a good idea to back up phone data. She can buy more, but it may be for select carriers. But she can also use Google Photos, which offers free unlimited high-resolution storage, and she can upload automatically with a simple check of a box.